What Americans DonÕt Know About the
Ukraine Crisis March 18, 2014
by WashingtonsBlogWhat You Never Learned In School É or On the News
While
Ukraine, Crimea and Russia are in the news, you probably donÕt know the
background: Vikings
founded Russia
(they got around). They set up their capital
in Kiev É the current capital of Ukraine.
(Vikings drank like fish, and the tradition continued: ÒDrinking is the
joy of the Rus, and we cannot live without this pleasureÓ. Funny
but true: that quote was made by the ruler
of the Rus people in 987 A.D. as an explanation of why they would not follow Islam, which prohibits
alcohol. The next year, they went with Christianity É which
let them keep drinking)
President
George H. W. Bush promised Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that –
if the Soviets broke up the Soviet
Union and dissolved the Warsaw Pact – then NATO would not move into those former Soviet
countries. This assured the Soviets that NATO would not encircle Russia.
But Bill Clinton broke AmericaÕs promise, and the U.S. has pursued a campaign of encircling Russia ever
since
▪
Jimmy
CarterÕs highly-influential National Security Adviser – the architect of
the plan to arm the Mujahadin and lure Russia into Afghanistan,
later Bill ClintonÕs special emissary to Azerbaijan
and Barack ObamaÕs foreign affairs adviser, who was instrumental in moving NATO
into the Warsaw Pact nations – argued in 1997 that Russia should not be allowed to regain control of Ukraine
▪
Ukraine
is crisscrossed with natural gas pipelines (and much of the worldÕs geopolitics
is actually driven by natural gas):
▪
The
former president of Ukraine was a corrupt jerk. But he was democratically elected. And the new guys are also jerks
▪
Crimea
was a part of Russia for 250 years. The Soviet leaders did not ask the people of Crimea, Ukraine or
Russia if Crimea should be transferred to Ukraine. They just did it by
fiat order. Now, a huge number of Crimeans voted – much more than in any modern American
presidential election – and they voted 97% in favor of rejoining Russia
▪
The
U.S. spent more than $5 billion dollars in pushing
Ukraine towards the West, and away from Russia
The head of security for Ukraine at the time of the riots which
overthrew the Ukrainian president alleges that the new Ukrainian government was behind the shootings by snipers which
dramatically escalated the violence. On the other hand, the new Ukranian
coalition accuses Russia of
deploying the snipers. We donÕt know who was behind the attacks, but sniper
violence has long been used as a tactic to disrupt peaceful
protest – or to build momentum for Òregime changeÓ – and no one has
yet proved one way or the other who the culprit was. Russia has called for an investigation into who was
behind the violence